Stupid Journalism
Have you noticed how often news outlets talk down to you? It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s television, radio, magazines, or even blogs. More often than not they tend to assume you’re stupid.
I can understand a degree of this. If you have a very general audience you’re going to have to make sure things are clear and easy to understand. People have very diverse interests, they may not have any idea what your topic is on, so you give some basic explanations to give them some grounding and go on with your story. That can work in some cases, and fail miserably in others.
Let me try an example.
Today in Moldova (a small nation between Ukraine and Romania,) a three headed cat was born.
This makes sense. Most of the people reading this blog have never heard of Moldova, or if they have are probably not sure where it is. Here’s more of what I’m seeing.
Today in Iraq (a nation in the middle east,) a three headed cat was born.
Given current events, the only people who haven’t heard of Iraq are too busy trying to just survive to bother reading your newspaper, blog, etc. You don’t need to explain what Iraq is to any first or second worlder.
I’m seeing this more and more, and it gets worse too. Say you’re adressing the right audience, writing a piece about some computer software or tools. If you start giving little hints like this and oversimplifying you’re doing a disservice to your core audience, and possibly misinforming your fringe audience by incorrect implication.
No Comments
» Leave one of your ownNo comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Leave a comment